The Gary Edens Collection

[Description by Gary Edens]

Back in 1993 I wrote and recorded this tribute for the WTRG/KIX Reunion Broadcast.

However, in 2001 Walter Knox (aka Jack Kane) took my voice-only piece and added KIX jingles, sounders and various snippets of airchecks to make it a much more interesting look back at the legendary WKIX of of the sixties.

This newly produced version of the WKIX Tribute was part of the Third WKIX Reunion, this time broadcast on WPTF AM (680) in Raleigh, N.C., September 20-23, 2001. It opened the show at 3:05 PM on Friday September 21, and was played again on Saturday September 22 at 12:05 PM.The 2001 Raleigh Radio Legends Reunion Weekend was a big hit! WKIX fans met their favorite disc jockeys and newscasters during a special Beach Music Blast on September 21 at Red’s Beach Music. Proceeds from the event helped endow a scholarship in broadcast journalism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Lots of KIX Alums showed up, including: Rick Dees, Ken Lowe (Steve Roddy), Charlie Brown, Jack Kane (Walter Knox), Pat Patterson, Russ Spooner, Bob Jones, Charlie C, Rich Reim, Joe Goodpasture, Clay Sledge, Bob Kelly, and Ray Caulder. A big dinner event was held on Saturday night September 22.

Top 40 radio in the Carolinas was defined in the 60s and 70s by Raleigh’s WKIX, the Giant of the South. Dozens of people launched distinguished broadcast careers at Big KIX. People like Hollywood’s Rick Dees, musician/TV host John Tesh, and media mogul Ken Lowe, now President & C.E.O. of The E. W. Scripps Company.The visionary who launched WKIX in 1959 was an ex-Marine and former CBS announcer Hugh Holder, who owned and managed the station until it was sold to Southern Broadcasting Company in the late 60s.

There have been several Raleigh Radio Reunions bringing together former WKIX air staffers. However, the reunion that drew the biggest number of WKIX alumni was staged by oldies station WTRG in Raleigh and broadcast live on that station on May 1, 1993. It was produced by Mike Smith and Mike Mitchell.

Featured on this reunion broadcast are the following WKIX alumni, in alphabetical order: Charlie Brown, Rick Dees, Gary Edens, Bob Jones, Jack Kane, Bob Kelly, Steve Roddy, Tom Scott, Clay Sledge, Russ Spooner, John Tesh, and Tommy Walker.

A special thanks to Bob Jones, Walter Knox, Rich Reim, Mike Smith and Ed Weiss for supplying most of the photos and logos used in this exhibit. Also the WKIX alumni owe our gratitude to the then WTRG owner, a courageous Tom Joyner, for turning his whole radio station over to the KIX Men of Music for nine hours on a Saturday in the middle of a spring ratings sweep.

Raleigh Radio Reunion, Part 1 (22:08)

The first segment of the broadcast is opened by WKIX alum Rick Dees. Jack Kane introduces a prepared piece by Gary Edens, “Memories of WKIX”. Kane plays the earliest existing aircheck of Charlie Brown from WSSB, Durham in 1961. Charlie Brown and former KIX morning personality Russ Spooner spin tales about Tommy Walker and then play a Walker early 60s WKIX aircheck.

Raleigh Radio Reunion, Part 2 (7:00)

Charlie Brown and Gary Edens talk about the popular Piggy Park Drive-In remote broadcasts. A 1971 Steve Roddy aircheck. Former WKIX sales rep Clay Sledge chats with Gary Edens about promos and commercials on KIX in the 60s. A 1963 Gary Edens aircheck. A Charlie Brown WKIX interview with the late singer Sam Cooke.

Raleigh Radio Reunion, Part 3 (13:08)

Charlie Brown and Jack Kane learn from Tommy Walker how he became the original KIX Man of Music in 1959 at the age 17. Russ Spooner and the “Fat Cat” remember the many KIX-sponsored concerts in Raleigh, especially beach music concerts by the Tams. Bob Kelly plays a 1962 Tommy Walker aircheck. Charlie Brown interviews Bobby Tomlinson of the Embers, a popular band started at North Carolina State University in 1958.

Raleigh Radio Reunion, Part 4 (10:33)

Bob Kelly admits to having heated music debates with Charlie Brown and Tommy Walker over the issue of beach music vs. national hits. Brown and Walker always won the debates and the station played lots of beach music as well as nationally charted hits. CB interviews John Tesh and Steve Roddy. Both men were part of WKIX’s traveling basketball team, the KIX Kagers. Bob Jones introduces a brief aircheck from Tom Scott’s “Underground”, the first KIX program to play “progressive music.”

In the 70s when I managed Southern Broadcasting Company’s Phoenix stations KOY and KRFM, I also handled national sales. Our rep was Eastman Radio and I’d make several trips a year to their major offices to conduct sales meetings and was always looking for creative ways to energize the reps at these early morning pep rallies. In 1974 I had an unusual idea for an Eastman sales meeting. Why not produce a jingle for Eastman? A jingle that was all about Eastman. I had heard a promo song from TM Productions called “At TM We Listen to You” and thought it could be rewritten and become a production singing the virtues of Eastman Radio. I called my old friend at TM, Jerry Atchley, and he said “Sure, come on down to Dallas and we’ll re-sing it for your rep firm.” I negotiated what I thought was a reasonable price for the jingle, $500. Little did Jerry and TM honcho Jim Long realize how difficult this project would become. You see, I wanted every call letter from the Eastman station list to be sung in those stations’ actual musical logos. It was several hundred stations and that many different musical signatures. I went to Dallas and was assigned to the late Bob Piper, a lawyer-turned-musician. He was a gentle and patient producer. It must have taken over six hours of TM studio time to complete this jingle. You don’t sing this long a jingle in one take. It was done in many pieces and then mixed together. Eastman Radio Chairman Frank Boyle with Gary Edens at a 1979 Phoenix retreat for the firm. The ice carving, SBC, stood for Southern Broadcasting Company. Eastman was the exclusive national rep firm for Southern. After this five and a half minute jingle was completed, the next morning I was at 30 Rockefeller Plaza at the New York Eastman headquarters premiering this production for their sales staff and rep brass, Carl Butrum, Jerry Schubert, Bill Burton and Frank Boyle. I think they all liked it. They gave me a standing ovation. They should have given the ovation to TM, for surely Jim Long and Jerry Atchley lost money on this $500 deal. In addition to the then Eastman station list being featured in the jingle, there was some intended inside humor in the production. Some aimed at spoofing Eastman President “Tiger Bill” Burton who was fond of taking doughnuts to time buyers on sales calls and telling everybody to “Be Fabulous.” The jingle became known as the Eastman Anthem because of the church choir-like acapella style used at the ending. Eastman Radio in its independent life was known as a scrappy sales firm representing many of the nation’s leading Top 40 stations. Today, as part of Clear Channel Communications, Eastman is consistently one of the top three billing national rep firms in the USA. And still, the only rep firm I know of with its own jingle.